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Night Watch: Poems
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • From the award-winning poet at the height of his career, a book of personal and American experiences, both beautiful and troubling, touching on the generative cycle of loss and renewal
“Kevin Young is a poet of exceptional depth and sensitivity. . . . Let yourself focus on every phrase.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Night Watch continues one of the most vital currents in contemporary poetry, transforming history and its silences into lyric through the poet’s eloquent ‘O wounded soul,/ speak.’” —The New York Times
Following on his exquisite Stones, Kevin Young’s new collection, written over the span of sixteen years, shapes stories of loss and legacy, inspired in part by other lives. After starting in the bayous of his family's Louisiana, Young journeys to further states of mind in “All Souls,” evoking “The whale / who finds the shore / & our poor prayers.” Another central sequence, “The Two-Headed Nightingale,” is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American “Carolina Twins.” Born into enslavement, stolen, and then displayed by P. T. Barnum and others, the twins later toured the world as free women, their alto and soprano voices harmonizing their own way. Young’s poem explores their evolving philosophical selfhood and “As one we sang, /we spake— / She was the body / I the soul / Without one / Perishes the whole.”
In “Darkling,” a cycle of poems inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Young expands and embroiders the circles of Hell, drawing a cosmology of both loneliness and accompaniment, where “the dead don’t know / what to do / with themselves.” Young writes of grief and hope as familiar yet surprising “It’s like a language, / loss—,” he writes, “learnt only / by living—there—.” Evoking the history of poetry, from the darkling thrush to the darkling plain, Young is defiant and playful on the way through purgatory to a kind of paradise. When he goes, he warns, “don't dare sing Amazing Grace”—that “National / Anthem of Suffering.” Instead, he suggests, “When I Fly Away, / Don't dare hold no vigil . . . Just burn the whole / Town on down.”
This collection will stand as one of Young’s best—his voice shaping sorrow with music, wisdom, heartache, and wit.
“Kevin Young is a poet of exceptional depth and sensitivity. . . . Let yourself focus on every phrase.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Night Watch continues one of the most vital currents in contemporary poetry, transforming history and its silences into lyric through the poet’s eloquent ‘O wounded soul,/ speak.’” —The New York Times
Following on his exquisite Stones, Kevin Young’s new collection, written over the span of sixteen years, shapes stories of loss and legacy, inspired in part by other lives. After starting in the bayous of his family's Louisiana, Young journeys to further states of mind in “All Souls,” evoking “The whale / who finds the shore / & our poor prayers.” Another central sequence, “The Two-Headed Nightingale,” is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American “Carolina Twins.” Born into enslavement, stolen, and then displayed by P. T. Barnum and others, the twins later toured the world as free women, their alto and soprano voices harmonizing their own way. Young’s poem explores their evolving philosophical selfhood and “As one we sang, /we spake— / She was the body / I the soul / Without one / Perishes the whole.”
In “Darkling,” a cycle of poems inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Young expands and embroiders the circles of Hell, drawing a cosmology of both loneliness and accompaniment, where “the dead don’t know / what to do / with themselves.” Young writes of grief and hope as familiar yet surprising “It’s like a language, / loss—,” he writes, “learnt only / by living—there—.” Evoking the history of poetry, from the darkling thrush to the darkling plain, Young is defiant and playful on the way through purgatory to a kind of paradise. When he goes, he warns, “don't dare sing Amazing Grace”—that “National / Anthem of Suffering.” Instead, he suggests, “When I Fly Away, / Don't dare hold no vigil . . . Just burn the whole / Town on down.”
This collection will stand as one of Young’s best—his voice shaping sorrow with music, wisdom, heartache, and wit.
149 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 2, 2025
24 people are currently reading
542 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Young
87 books374 followersKevin Young is an American poet heavily influenced by the poet Langston Hughes and the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Young graduated from Harvard College in 1992, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (1992-1994), and received his MFA from Brown University. While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group, The Dark Room Collective.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Young is the author of Most Way Home, To Repel Ghosts, Jelly Roll, Black Maria, For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; Blues Poems; Jazz Poems and John Berryman's Selected Poems.
His Black Cat Blues, originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2005. Young's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. In 2007, he served as guest editor for an issue of Ploughshares. He has written on art and artists for museums in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
His 2003 book of poems Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award.
After stints at the University of Georgia and Indiana University, Young now teaches writing at Emory University, where he is the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, as well as the curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a large collection of first and rare editions of poetry in English.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Young is the author of Most Way Home, To Repel Ghosts, Jelly Roll, Black Maria, For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; Blues Poems; Jazz Poems and John Berryman's Selected Poems.
His Black Cat Blues, originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2005. Young's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. In 2007, he served as guest editor for an issue of Ploughshares. He has written on art and artists for museums in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
His 2003 book of poems Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award.
After stints at the University of Georgia and Indiana University, Young now teaches writing at Emory University, where he is the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, as well as the curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a large collection of first and rare editions of poetry in English.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
October 13, 2025
⁀➷ 2.75 ★ ´ˎ˗
i understand the overall themes that were expressed within this collection of poems, i just didn't necessarily vibe with the writing style whatsoever. it felt very contrived and pretentious rather than emotionally raw.
i understand the overall themes that were expressed within this collection of poems, i just didn't necessarily vibe with the writing style whatsoever. it felt very contrived and pretentious rather than emotionally raw.
June 26, 2025
Thank you Netgalley, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, and also Kevin Young for sending me this advanced review copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Unfortunately this writing style didn't grab me at all. It wasn't bad or anything, but it didn't make me feel anything like poetry usually does. I have no idea why though, and it was an odd experience.
Unfortunately this writing style didn't grab me at all. It wasn't bad or anything, but it didn't make me feel anything like poetry usually does. I have no idea why though, and it was an odd experience.
October 17, 2025
Beautiful and heartbreaking
December 13, 2025
I need to read more death poetry
June 12, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the E-ARC! This E-ARC was sent to me in exchange for an honest review!
I had a hard time getting into this one. No poem was objectively bad, I actually think they were all well written and lyrical. But they also felt average. They didn't pack a punch or hit me in the heart. The author was trying to be emotional and it wasn't working.
I think it could have been deeper and explored more cutting themes. I expected more.
I had a hard time getting into this one. No poem was objectively bad, I actually think they were all well written and lyrical. But they also felt average. They didn't pack a punch or hit me in the heart. The author was trying to be emotional and it wasn't working.
I think it could have been deeper and explored more cutting themes. I expected more.
December 29, 2025
"the rain slows, shows the earthworms they were wrong"
none of the poems really stuck out to me, I could sense a light layer of sadness in some of them, but for the most part, they seemed fairly average. Also, it is important to have a voice, to have a distinct writing style, but having every poem where each line is 2-4 words long, made them all feel almost exactly the same
none of the poems really stuck out to me, I could sense a light layer of sadness in some of them, but for the most part, they seemed fairly average. Also, it is important to have a voice, to have a distinct writing style, but having every poem where each line is 2-4 words long, made them all feel almost exactly the same
November 15, 2025
What the daffodils decide early to do— bloom— our body decides too— The crooked dogwood— The pear tree a crabapple is grafted onto— both bear their fruit— The bitter not-quite apples The pear tree entwined around itself— This the ivy found— I shall go first then follow— The blossoms blizzard all around. Tomorrow a cold spell, unexpected, will frost the crowded ground.
So much imagery to think about in these poems, ways of telling history that lights up the cold and dark places and begs us to stop repeating history, stop this insanity of reviving images and practices from the Holocaust and slavery and colonialism. I am coming to believe this time is the rock bottom we have to hit, a revival of hate, but only then can we rise again. I just don’t know how deep it goes before it starts to turn again. These poems say so too. The poet has said the pandemic and Dante’s Divine Comedy inspired them, and they come from a dark place, but even so, he incorporates images of nature and family and place that light those places.
The heart can’t help it— forgets. Beats like a bird against the wind, or the pane. Slim to none. Only its shadow scares it away. Strange, how hard it is to donate— so we wait. Lend me your eyes. Hatchet moon. Late heat.
How it hammers, the heart. Go head on without me. For the journey, jettison nothing. Let autumn do that— how it sheds clothes like a runaway heading steady north.
It’s like a language, loss— can be learnt only by living—there—
What anchors us to this thirst & earth, its threats & thinnesses— its ways of waning & making the most of— of worse & much worse—if not this light lifting up over the ridge.
MILKTEETH
My son issues cries all through the line to see your house, Anne Frank, the house now named for you, factory of fear, of jam your father, on paper, could no longer own. Indoors, in the near-dark, my wife nurses our son silent. He meets sleep in her arms while a tape
repeats of the woman who hid you, unlikely angel, employee. Who also kept the loose leaves of your diaries. The hydrangea in the courtyard behind the house so beautiful it seems unreal— your words cover the walls, postcards & stars you pasted to keep yourself company— Rudy Vallee & boys blond as those who’d later
I have no one, you told a friend across the final fence. My son wakes now that my wife weeps & I picture you alone. Words, I have none. Only my son’s wordless stories, his song half hunger, or pain, milk teeth coming in & yours did anyone save?
SHINE
The stars here shine brighter & there are lights somewhere saying my name— I know all this Lord must go. That even the dark is not there tomorrow—morning comes too early for me, who can sleep when the world’s emptying? The desert cold, the wild of what goes.
I believe no more in nothing—not yet in something— the severed wing of a bird in the road still stirs, lifted by wind.
Think I’ll stay here, friends, in sunlight at the start of summer, the snapdragons & daylilies bright my son plucks. Down the road the dandelions bloom in a garden of stone. A garland of souls. Like the vines I’ll climb— like children who join their limbs to the silver maple’s, waving to all who pass on by.
Sky crowded with stars I cannot see.
I’ve come down with a case of Paradise. I’ve contracted Eden fever. I’m flush with the wish to be allowed to stay—to watch the maples turn from saplings to trunks
So much imagery to think about in these poems, ways of telling history that lights up the cold and dark places and begs us to stop repeating history, stop this insanity of reviving images and practices from the Holocaust and slavery and colonialism. I am coming to believe this time is the rock bottom we have to hit, a revival of hate, but only then can we rise again. I just don’t know how deep it goes before it starts to turn again. These poems say so too. The poet has said the pandemic and Dante’s Divine Comedy inspired them, and they come from a dark place, but even so, he incorporates images of nature and family and place that light those places.
The heart can’t help it— forgets. Beats like a bird against the wind, or the pane. Slim to none. Only its shadow scares it away. Strange, how hard it is to donate— so we wait. Lend me your eyes. Hatchet moon. Late heat.
How it hammers, the heart. Go head on without me. For the journey, jettison nothing. Let autumn do that— how it sheds clothes like a runaway heading steady north.
It’s like a language, loss— can be learnt only by living—there—
What anchors us to this thirst & earth, its threats & thinnesses— its ways of waning & making the most of— of worse & much worse—if not this light lifting up over the ridge.
MILKTEETH
My son issues cries all through the line to see your house, Anne Frank, the house now named for you, factory of fear, of jam your father, on paper, could no longer own. Indoors, in the near-dark, my wife nurses our son silent. He meets sleep in her arms while a tape
repeats of the woman who hid you, unlikely angel, employee. Who also kept the loose leaves of your diaries. The hydrangea in the courtyard behind the house so beautiful it seems unreal— your words cover the walls, postcards & stars you pasted to keep yourself company— Rudy Vallee & boys blond as those who’d later
I have no one, you told a friend across the final fence. My son wakes now that my wife weeps & I picture you alone. Words, I have none. Only my son’s wordless stories, his song half hunger, or pain, milk teeth coming in & yours did anyone save?
SHINE
The stars here shine brighter & there are lights somewhere saying my name— I know all this Lord must go. That even the dark is not there tomorrow—morning comes too early for me, who can sleep when the world’s emptying? The desert cold, the wild of what goes.
I believe no more in nothing—not yet in something— the severed wing of a bird in the road still stirs, lifted by wind.
Think I’ll stay here, friends, in sunlight at the start of summer, the snapdragons & daylilies bright my son plucks. Down the road the dandelions bloom in a garden of stone. A garland of souls. Like the vines I’ll climb— like children who join their limbs to the silver maple’s, waving to all who pass on by.
Sky crowded with stars I cannot see.
I’ve come down with a case of Paradise. I’ve contracted Eden fever. I’m flush with the wish to be allowed to stay—to watch the maples turn from saplings to trunks
September 29, 2025
Night Watch is an intriguing collection with themes, such as Dante's Inferno through the lens of Rauchenberg's illustrations of the poem, as well as conjoined African American twins who were exploited and unethically used for scientific research at the hands of white doctors and PT Barnum, and, the title work, which references a painting and also a celebration if one considers double-meanings for words, as I believe could be said of many poems in this collection. An example of a play with words and context (for me at least) was the poem, "The Hotel of Hell (Circle Nine, Round 3)" a clever socio-political commentary that starts with the title and continues with the devil being a thin skinned orange being who buys his friends and lives in a white washed shack...
Poetry criticism and/or close reading poetry is not a skill set I possess, however, Young's voice allows this reader to not get lost and gain a sense of context. That said, highly recommend reading the inside flap of the dust jacked and the acknowledgment before reading the poems to help with navigation.
Poetry criticism and/or close reading poetry is not a skill set I possess, however, Young's voice allows this reader to not get lost and gain a sense of context. That said, highly recommend reading the inside flap of the dust jacked and the acknowledgment before reading the poems to help with navigation.
October 23, 2025
Out my window
a soldier in dress blues
beneath the faint
midday moon
lays a wreath
on a well-kept grave
& with what
arm he has left
salutes.
-- "All Souls" ("Out my window")
When we smile
the dead nod back--
when we laugh the dead don't
seem to mind. Tonight
the lost rise
with the moon above
the mountain, a stone
rolled back
from the tomb -- the body
stolen of its soul --
the blind world or whirlwind --
In daylight, see it
list in the sky
sometimes, the moon --
ghostly eye, great
reflected rock,
bare mirror
where we cannot breathe.
-- "Darling," "Noli Me Tangere (Circle Two)"
a soldier in dress blues
beneath the faint
midday moon
lays a wreath
on a well-kept grave
& with what
arm he has left
salutes.
-- "All Souls" ("Out my window")
When we smile
the dead nod back--
when we laugh the dead don't
seem to mind. Tonight
the lost rise
with the moon above
the mountain, a stone
rolled back
from the tomb -- the body
stolen of its soul --
the blind world or whirlwind --
In daylight, see it
list in the sky
sometimes, the moon --
ghostly eye, great
reflected rock,
bare mirror
where we cannot breathe.
-- "Darling," "Noli Me Tangere (Circle Two)"
January 12, 2026
I liked sections of this collection. A few lines made me stop, reread, want to remember them. Mostly, though, I didn’t connect. I felt like since I haven’t read Dante’s Inferno, I couldn’t “get” the last cycle. Which is fine. Not all poems have to be written for all audiences. It’s just interesting to me. The Nightingale cycle was a story told in verse. An every-man’s type of saga. And then the Darkling cycle felt like it was written for inhabitants of the ivory tower. You know how you read a book sometimes and you think “I’m not smart enough, haven’t taken enough lit class to understand this?” That’s how I felt.
September 28, 2025
This is a gorgeous, glorious collection of poetry.
I was feeling a little sad this evening when I picked up Night Watch, and Kevin Young’s poems were the perfect companion. They took me by the hand and walked me through the horrors and the joys of being alive, the terrible things that people have done to each other throughout history and wryly humorous observations about death and toddlers and the messy, everyday wonder of being human.
It was balm for my soul, and I want to go back and read it again and again and again.
I was feeling a little sad this evening when I picked up Night Watch, and Kevin Young’s poems were the perfect companion. They took me by the hand and walked me through the horrors and the joys of being alive, the terrible things that people have done to each other throughout history and wryly humorous observations about death and toddlers and the messy, everyday wonder of being human.
It was balm for my soul, and I want to go back and read it again and again and again.
October 4, 2025
Thank you to Knopf and Netgalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!
Now available.
Kevin Young's 16th book of poems, Night Watch, is a surrealist collage. The collection starts with musings about growing up in Louisiana as a Black child, birds as metaphors for two-headed children who were paraded in the Barnum Circus under torturous conditions, and a descent into Dante's Inferno. What I found most compelling is the mapping of the Circles onto the Louisiana landscape.
Now available.
Kevin Young's 16th book of poems, Night Watch, is a surrealist collage. The collection starts with musings about growing up in Louisiana as a Black child, birds as metaphors for two-headed children who were paraded in the Barnum Circus under torturous conditions, and a descent into Dante's Inferno. What I found most compelling is the mapping of the Circles onto the Louisiana landscape.
January 16, 2026
Beautifully written; I picked this up in the poetry section of Indigo by complete chance. At times, I thought the collection to be a little pedantic, but I say this endearingly. Some poems were fantastic, others more forgettable. I wondered if the collection had been smaller whether it would have had a punchier effect. Thematically, it touched on grief, death, faith and self image. Overall, very well written and I’m curious to read the other works by this author.
August 1, 2025
Thanks for the ARC
The gorgeous cover art intrigued me so much to pick this book up as soon as possible.
Unfortunately I couldn't connect with most of the collection.I expected to be more emotionally impacted as a reader.
I understand what the poet was trying to convey through his lines but the way some of the verse ended abruptly made them unintelligible and distracting.
The gorgeous cover art intrigued me so much to pick this book up as soon as possible.
Unfortunately I couldn't connect with most of the collection.I expected to be more emotionally impacted as a reader.
I understand what the poet was trying to convey through his lines but the way some of the verse ended abruptly made them unintelligible and distracting.
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November 1, 2025I had a hard time getting into this collection of poems. Based on the cover, I was hoping for nature poetry and received death poetry instead. However, once I got used to the cadence of the poem, I read the last 50 pages in a single sitting.
September 25, 2025
I’m not a good poetry analyst, but I didn’t feel much in these poems. I like the last section the best - I did find some deeper meaning and humor in those.
November 8, 2025
The flow wasn’t there for me but I loved the references to Dante.
December 2, 2025
3.5 stars
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December 16, 2025more death poetry is always a good thing
December 19, 2025
Not really a poetry person, but there were some nice moments of prose in here! I was not the target audience, though. My usual opinions on poetry apply, but it was good to branch out
December 27, 2025
Not a big poetry guy but this was… good! Didn’t realize this guy was so prolific. Poetry editor of The New Yorker, wrote 11 books, director at the Smithsonian. I’d seek out more by him.
January 2, 2026
The first poem about the cormorant was amazing! Many of the poems here deal with death, possible afterlife, and coping.
January 15, 2026
I usually try to finish ever book that I read(even the more boring ones), but this book was so boring that it made my Chemistry and Algebra 2 test feel like an amusement park.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews